


Try and Try Again

by sunkelles



Series: Femslash February 2015 [7]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
Genre: 4+1 fic, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, Femslash, Femslash February, Lots of breakups
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-08
Updated: 2015-02-08
Packaged: 2018-03-09 13:17:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3251114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunkelles/pseuds/sunkelles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four people Sansa broke up with, and one that she didn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Try and Try Again

**Author's Note:**

> Sansa and Asha is endgame here. If you're not about that, you might like to try a different fic.
> 
> Sansa/Asha wormed its way into my heart and now it won't go away.

**1.**

 

Joffrey Baratheon is tall, blonde and handsome the first time that she sees him. He struts into their English class the way that a king struts through his castle, and Sansa almost falls in love right there. He’s slightly arrogant, the way all talented high school football players are, but charming enough to cover it up. She’s a cheerleader; he’s the quarterback, and this is a fairytale romance. High school sweethearts that will stand the test of time. That’s the way the world works.

They go on a few dates, cute excursions to coffee shops or the movies, but Sansa doesn’t feel emotional intimacy grow. She feels like a well-bred dog that Joffrey’s parading around for show.

 

Her siblings tell her that he’s bad news, and maybe she can feel it too, the wrongness in his demeanor, but this is a fairytale romance, and maybe Sansa just wants it to last a little while.

 

It takes an elbow to the gut and a bruise to the face for her to realize that she’s been in too deep.  

 

Joffrey might not be a monster; she doesn’t stick around long enough after the first incident to find out, but he’s certainly no knight in shining armor. He is a violent, arrogant teenager, and Sansa doesn’t need that in her life. She knows that she deserves much better than that.

 

**2.**

 

 

 

Sansa’s two months into her freshman year of college before she meets anyone else who catches her eye. She’s been careful since Joffrey, but Brienne might be the most different than Joffrey that a person can be.

Brienne Tarth is the antithesis of the conventionally attractive woman, but in some ways that makes her more attractive. Her nose is abnormally large, as is most of the rest of her, but her freckles form constellations across her cheeks and her blue eyes sparkle like ocean water on a sunny day. She’s on the rowing team, and is truly an Amazon of a woman. She smiles with her crooked teeth and it lights up her face the way that the sun lights the universe.

Sansa realizes that she might be a little bit in love.

 

It’s a relationship mainly built on ice cream dates, romance movies, and Sansa going to her rowing tournaments. Though it’s nice while it lasts, they don’t really work as a couple. There isn’t romantic passion there, at least as far as Sansa can tell, and it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.

 

The breakup is mutual.

They decide to remain friends, which is a relief to Sansa. Though they didn’t work as a couple, Brienne is a fantastic friend and Sansa wouldn’t want to lose her.

 

**3.**

Margaery Tyrell looks like a goddess. Her light Southern drawl slides softly off her tongue along with her easy words of love. Sansa must have grown out of her knight in shining armor phase, because Margaery seems more like a fairy tale princess than a heroic knight.

 

Sansa finds out that thinking of her as a princess is not too far off. Margaery plans on running for president one day, so she’ll be the closest thing that the United States has to royalty.

 

Their relationship is built differently than any of the ones that she’s had before. Theirs is made up of coffee dates and romantic poetry, and stolen kisses and making love in Margaery’s apartment at ungodly hours in the morning.

 

“Give me a poem, Sansa,” Margaery tells her one night as she lies on her stomach.

Sansa obliges the way that she always does.

“Not marble, nor the gilded monuments of princes, shall this outlive powerful rhyme,” Sansa says dramatically, and Margaery groans.

“Shakespeare again?” she asks, but then Sansa smirks at her.

“Do you want a poem or not?” she asks, and Marg looks like she’s mulling it over before she runs a hand seductively up Sansa’s thigh.

“No,” she says, “I have something better on the agenda.” Something deep within Sansa flares and she kisses her girlfriend fiercely on the mouth.

 

Everything goes wonderfully for the rest of the school year, and for about half of the next year, Margaery’s senior year. Sansa feels like she’s floating when she’s with her, and maybe that’s what love’s supposed to be, the way she feels when she’s with Margaery.

 

Everything goes wonderfully until it doesn’t. That’s the way that these things tend to work.

 

 

“I’m sorry, Sansa,” Margaery says, and there’s enough remorse in her tone that Sansa can tell that she is sorry, but she isn’t sorry enough not to do it.

“You have to understand, Sansa,” She says, her voice cracking, “this is the only way to save my career.”

 “Why do you care so much?” Sansa demands, “Marg, we can still make this work. You are amazing and popular and persuasive. You can still get votes, even if you’re open about who you are.” Margaery’s a lesbian, pure and simple. If she’s going to spend the rest of her life in the closet from now on, she’ll end up even unhappier than Sansa is right now.  

“This is the end,” she says, with remorse in her tone, and Sansa doesn’t know what to say. Protestations flood her mind, angry words and vile comebacks, but they won’t help. They won’t change her mind.

“Did I mean nothing to you?” she settles on.

“Of course not,” Margaery tells her, and she sounds bitter and broken.  
“I just didn’t matter enough to you,” she says, “not as much as your politics.” Margaery has always craved power, prestige, and influence, and she has always thought that she could only achieve these things through politics. She’s told Sansa enough times about how she wants to be president one day.

Sansa supposes she should have expected Marg to set her aside when she became a hindrance. The public generally doesn’t vote for women, so expecting them to vote for a queer woman is like expecting pigs to fly.

“Don’t do this,” she begs, the tears beginning to stream down her face.

“Please, Marg, we can make this work,” she promises, and she feels pathetic. Margaery is the one leaving for her career, and Sansa’s the only one trying to make this work. She bets that she’s the only one who will shed tears over it.  

“I’m sorry,” Margaery Tyrell says with a guilty, cracked quality to her voice, but she turns away from her (ex) girlfriend and turns the doorknob. Then, she slams the door on Sansa, and on everything they’ve built together.

 

**4.**

 

Sansa doesn’t know how to pull herself together afterwards. It feels so strange to be alone after two years of being with someone (after two years wasted on Margaery’s empty promises). Arya basically has to drag her out of her apartment to take her out drinking a few days later.

 

Though she loves her sister dearly, Arya Stark is not someone who is good with helping someone through rough emotional patches. She should never become a therapist.

Arya buys her a beer and doesn’t even bother with small talk before she bursts into what she wants to say. Her little sister is blunt that way, and sometimes, Sansa really appreciates that. After dating a politician and always wondering what was exactly on her mind, Sansa appreciates it even more.

"You’re like a 5 on the Kinsey Scale," Arya tells her, "Joffrey was some sort of terrible fluke. I’m not saying you won’t keep getting your heart broken. But at least it won’t be by assholes like him, it’ll just be by assholes like Margaery Tyrell." Somehow, Sansa doesn’t find this as comforting as Arya intended it to be, but she does take some comfort in it. At least Margaery just left a bruise in her heart, and not one on her face. Her taste in women is (marginally) better than her taste in men.

 

She doesn’t want to get into another relationship quickly, and she really doesn’t want to get her heart broken.

Maybe that’s why she goes for Mya Stone.

 

Mya Stone is attractive, experienced, and not looking for a relationship, which is exactly what Sansa needs. Right now, she doesn’t need a deep relationship, she needs good sex.

 

They get drinks and they laugh and make small talk, and it feels sort of empty, but Sansa isn’t looking for a relationship. She’s looking for casual sex, and Mya is happy to oblige.

 

They get to Mya’s apartment that night before they rip off each other’s clothes, but they don’t make it much further than the counter. Hands wander and lips nip as their hips move desperately seeking friction.

“You’re such a good girl,” Mya drawls into her ear.

“I’m sure you can help me go bad,” she says in response, a smirk curling on her lips. Mya silences her with a searing kiss, and Sansa presses back against her all the same.

 

Other than the sex, Mya and Sansa do not work together. There is no way around this particular fact. Eventually, this becomes enough of a problem that Sansa feels she needs to end it.

 

There comes a time where Sansa wants more than casual sex.

 

“I’m sorry,” Sansa says, “but I can’t do this. I need something deeper.”

“Alright,” Mya tells her. Sansa can’t tell if she’s angered by relieved about the complete lack of resistance.

**1.**

 

Her breakup with Mya does not break her heart, which is a relief. But she and Mya were never in love. Maybe her heart has forgotten how much it hurt after Margaery, or maybe it remembers how good it felt when it was with her, but it seems eager to fall in love. Asha Greyjoy seems an unlikely candidate.

 

Sansa reconnects with Asha Greyjoy at Robb and Jeyne’s wedding, which is as much Theon’s wedding as either of the two who are actually getting married.

Jon once described them as “As emotionally close as two people can be before they’re dating.”

 

The local Knights of Columbus hasn’t been updated since 1962, and the only reason that they spent the time to string Christmas lights all over the building is because the dying florescent lights are actually hard on people’s eyes. Sansa takes a seat at the bar and orders something heavily alcoholic and fruity

 

Somehow Sansa ends up drinking by Asha, making small talk that is surprisingly comfortable.

“So how did you end up at Robb’s wedding?” Sansa asks, though she half knows the answer. She’s tipsy, and things tend to slip straight to her lips after she’s had more than one drink.

“Thought someone might as well see my brother’s appalling best man speech,” Asha says, and Sansa smiles. Asha smiles right back. Sansa takes another swig of her drink and finishes it off.

 “I’ll buy you another drink,” Asha says.

“Don’t worry about it,” Sansa says with a quirk of her lips, “it’s on my brother’s tab anyway.” Asha quirks a smile at that, and Sansa’s heart does a little somersault.

 

“Do you wanna dance?” Asha asks, holding a hand out for Sansa to grab. She grabs it earnestly, and starts twirling around the dancefloor with the other girl.

She wishes that she wasn’t so eager to fall in love again.

 

When they finally finish dancing as the wedding dance is ending, Sansa is flushed and breathless and Asha’s laughing a gorgeous, deep laugh.

“Do you want to catch a movie tomorrow?” Asha asks with a flirty smirk. Asha’s flirting is completely different than Margaery’s. Marg’s was girly and sensual, while Asha’s is courser, but it feels more genuine. At least Sansa hopes that it is.

“Yes,” she says, “I’d like that.”

 

By the end of it, they’re throwing popcorn at each other and loudly apologizing to the employees and Sansa’s laughing louder than she’s laughed since Margaery, feeling better than she’s felt since Margaery.

 

Their relationship is built on a foundation of dates at bars, action movies, and a surprising mutual interest in Renassaince Fairs.

They go as Jack Sparrow and Elizabeth Swann, and it might be the sexiest thing that Sansa’s ever done.

 

The “we’ll support you no matter who you bring home, as long as it’s not Joffrey” mentality ends as soon as she brings Asha Greyjoy.

“One Greyjoy is more than enough,” her mother says.

“Theon’s not technically part of the family,” Sansa reasons.  

“We all know he and Robb are platonically married,” Catelyn Stark says, and Sansa has to admit that it’s fairly true. Theon has been Robb’s unwelcome “plus one” to family events since fourth grade, even after Robb started having and bringing girlfriends. Her mother has just sort of learned to put up with the boy her son loves.

 

When Asha asks her to come take a ride on her boat, that’s when Sansa knows that she’s as serious about this as Sansa is. Black Wind is Asha’s baby, and if she’s showing her to Sansa, that means that Sansa means a lot to her. It means that she trusts her.

“This is my boat, Black Wind,” Asha says, proudly gesturing to the old fishing vessel that could be at best called “worn” and that Arya would call “a piece of floating shit”. But Sansa can’t disappoint Asha when she has that proud and expectant look on her face.

“She’s beautiful,” she says, and as Asha smiles, Sansa knows that she wasn’t exactly lying.

 

Asha smirks at her, but she also smiles softly sometimes, and tells Sansa her hopes and dreams. Sansa would take Asha over Mya any day.

 

“My father won’t pass the company on to me if we get married,” Asha says softly, and Sansa looks to her in horror.

“Don’t you do this to me,” she says, “don’t you do this to me, Asha.” She feels like she’s suffocating. How could- how could _Asha_ do this to her?

“Sansa,” Asha says, with a surprising amount of tenderness as she grasps Sansa’s hands, looking deeply into her eyes. Asha’s eyes are a stormy greyish blue, but there’s something soft there today.

“I told him to fuck off,” she tells her with an enormous grin that lights up both her face and her eyes.

Sansa laughs, hard and loud. Maybe it’s the build-up of her adrenaline, maybe it’s her anger, but she laughs as she kisses Asha harshly on the mouth.

“Don’t fucking scare me like that again,” she says, and she realizes that Asha’s dirty mouth has rubbed off on her. Asha laughs too, and Sansa seizes her lips in a kiss. She wants to wipe that stupid smirk off her face, and maybe fuck against the kitchen table. She might want to do that too. She’s seething with anger but somehow relieved and overjoyed at the same time and she presses against Asha, trying to drink in the other girl’s briny taste.

 _Yes,_ she thinks, _this is love._ And she kisses her harder, losing herself in her thoughts of forever and the feeling of Asha’s lips against hers.


End file.
